population decline

[Neonmoon 38129]

Interesting, so why are the super religious Iranians and Indians showing low birth rates? Same with Indonesia. I would posit India’s emerging economy and large increase in literacy over the past 50 years. Iran, no idea. 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

44 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Am I the only person rooting for population decline?

It’s good from a 500 year perspective but none of us will live to see the positive sides of it. 

[bolverk 29644]

1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

Interesting, so why are the super religious Iranians and Indians showing low birth rates? Same with Indonesia. I would posit India’s emerging economy and large increase in literacy over the past 50 years. Iran, no idea. 

Iran: 78% say religion is very important to them 🔺; 85% literacy rate for women 🔺; 1.93 children born/woman 🔻

Egypt: 72% say religion is very important to them 🔻; 67% literacy rate for women 🔻; 2.88 children born/woman 🔺

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/

 

In this single example of two predominantly Muslim majority countries, a higher literacy rate is correlated to a lower birth rate.

Iran is more religious than Egypt but has a lower birth rate. Iranian women are also more educated and have a lower birth rate.

 

Apologies for the wrong link above. Here's the adult female literacy rate by country (many not recorded, which is why I singled out Egypt and Iran, which are):

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.LITR.FE.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map

Edited February 9, 2023 by bolverk

[Macanudo 12974]

16 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

We could give everyone in the world an acre of land and they could all fit in the state of Texas leaving the rest of the world totally and completely unpopulated.  

Texas is 171,000,000 acres.   There are over 8,015,000,000 people on the planet as of now.   We've added over 7,000,000 people just since January 1.  

 

There is would be 48 people per acre.  640 acres equals a square mile.  This equals 30,000 people per square mile.   

 

For comparison:

Houston = around 3,600 per square mile.

NYC = around 29,300 per square mile.

The entire state of Texas would look like NYC in population density.     Your statement is pretty absurd.

 

 

 

 

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

2 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Texas is 171,000,000 acres.   There are over 8,015,000,000 people on the planet as of now.   We've added over 7,000,000 people just since January 1.  

 

There is would be 48 people per acre.  640 acres equals a square mile.  This equals 30,000 people per square mile.   

 

For comparison:

Houston = around 3,600 per square mile.

NYC = around 29,300 per square mile.

The entire state of Texas would look like NYC in population density.     Your statement is pretty absurd.

 

 

 

 

OK, my numbers are a bit dated apparently should have fact checked that a little better, 1 family unit per acre vs 48 people per acre doesn't really make a big difference in the overriding point, the point remains this- this planet is essentially empty my man.  You've lived in Alaska- you know that.  Drive anywhere in the midwest or mountain states or Canada or anything like that and its nothing but empty and land stretching on and on without any real sign of significant population.  You could give every family unit (average 9.9 people per household worldwide)  in the world an acre in America (2.4B acres) and have half of America left over.  I think that's probably where that Texas stat went so badly- it was family units I probably heard. 

 

[MissingInAction 25002]

46 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Texas is 171,000,000 acres.   There are over 8,015,000,000 people on the planet as of now.   We've added over 7,000,000 people just since January 1.  

 

There is would be 48 people per acre.  640 acres equals a square mile.  This equals 30,000 people per square mile.   

 

For comparison:

Houston = around 3,600 per square mile.

NYC = around 29,300 per square mile.

The entire state of Texas would look like NYC in population density.     Your statement is pretty absurd.

 

 

 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

13 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I mean- first it’s cultural suicide and then it’s just species wide suicide if these trends continue, especially as they continue to accelerate.

Ummm, you want to clarify your idea of what your definition of species is? Because we are all one species and that is not going extinct even if global birthrates drop. Now, one might argue that we could anti-intellectual ourselves into a viral or bacterial pandemic that decimates the population, but maybe slow down on trying to raise your stock prices in your Sex Tent company.

 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

1 hour ago, Macanudo said:

Texas is 171,000,000 acres.   There are over 8,015,000,000 people on the planet as of now.   We've added over 7,000,000 people just since January 1.  

 

There is would be 48 people per acre.  640 acres equals a square mile.  This equals 30,000 people per square mile.   

 

For comparison:

Houston = around 3,600 per square mile.

NYC = around 29,300 per square mile.

The entire state of Texas would look like NYC in population density.     Your statement is pretty absurd.

 

 

 

 

off by a factor of 50.  nbd.  

[Schulz2.0 28950]

1 hour ago, Wulaw Horn said:

OK, my numbers are a bit dated apparently should have fact checked that a little better, 1 family unit per acre vs 48 people per acre doesn't really make a big difference in the overriding point, the point remains this- this planet is essentially empty my man.  You've lived in Alaska- you know that.  Drive anywhere in the midwest or mountain states or Canada or anything like that and its nothing but empty and land stretching on and on without any real sign of significant population.  You could give every family unit (average 9.9 people per household worldwide)  in the world an acre in America (2.4B acres) and have half of America left over.  I think that's probably where that Texas stat went so badly- it was family units I probably heard. 

 

You're way, way out over your skis here. Again, look up the Dunning-Krueger effect.

[YGIFS 19449]

"A bit dated"???  As in 1537?  

Look, we all know where this discussion is headed.  Forcing women, by hook or by crook, particularly white ones or light-skinned Hispanic/Asian women in the U.S. to have more babies.  Ain't rocket surgery.

[TKthunder2 4985]

The cloning labs in Western South Dakota will be fully operational by 2040. The US will be fine.

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

2 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Ummm, you want to clarify your idea of what your definition of species is? Because we are all one species and that is not going extinct even if global birthrates drop. Now, one might argue that we could anti-intellectual ourselves into a viral or bacterial pandemic that decimates the population, but maybe slow down on trying to raise your stock prices in your Sex Tent company.

 

Species equals humanity as you quoted. 

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

1 hour ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

off by a factor of 50.  nbd.  

If I said there was 5 golf balls in the astrodome and there were really 250 golf balls in the astrodome the astrodome would still be virtually empty of balls. 

1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

"A bit dated"???  As in 1537?  

Look, we all know where this discussion is headed.  Forcing women, by hook or by crook, particularly white ones or light-skinned Hispanic/Asian women in the U.S. to have more babies.  Ain't rocket surgery.

Uhmmm, no. I can’t fathom anyone actually proposing that and there’s literally no way it would gain any tractions, so…

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

Just now, Wulaw Horn said:

If I said there was 5 golf balls in the astrodome and there were really 250 golf balls in the astrodome the astrodome would still be virtually empty of balls. 

I am also a believer that there is a lot of resources to go around for population growth to not be a near term (eg multiple centuries) concern.  However, we have standards here.  You can’t be off by orders of magnitude and expect credibility. 

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

2 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

I am also a believer that there is a lot of resources to go around for population growth to not be a near term (eg multiple centuries) concern.  However, we have standards here.  You can’t be off by orders of magnitude and expect credibility. 

The point that the world is virtually empty was so self evident to me that I didn’t fact check something I heard long ago. Sue me. 

[bolverk 29644]

tl;dr: There are certain policies other developed countries have tried, which have had limited success. The ones which target easing the burden of having more than one child, such as extended parental leave and free early childcare, appear to have the most durable success. Others have tried cash bonuses but the effects of those have been more short lived. 

 

Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden.
Wealthy countries have been trying to boost their birthrates for decades. The results have been pretty similar.

China’s population has begun to decline, a demographic turning point for the country that has global implications. Experts had long anticipated this moment, but it arrived in 2022 several years earlier than expected, prompting hand-wringing among economists over the long-term impacts given the country’s immense economic heft and its role as the world’s manufacturer.

With 850,000 fewer births than deaths last year, at least according to the country’s official report, China joined an expanding set of nations with shrinking populations caused by years of falling fertility and often little or even negative net migration, a group that includes Italy, Greece and Russia, along with swaths of Eastern and Southern Europe and several Asian nations like South Korea and Japan.

Spoiler

Even places that have not begun to lose population, such as Australia, France and Britain, have been grappling with demographic decline for years as life expectancy increases and women have fewer children.

History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one.

Even though China’s birthrate has fallen substantially over the last five decades, it was long a country with a relatively young population, which meant it could withstand those low rates for a long time before starting to see population losses. Like many developed countries, China’s older population is now swelling — a consequence of its earlier boom — leaving it in a position similar to that of many wealthy nations: in need of more young people.

Countries such as the U.S. and Germany have been able to rely on robust immigration, even with relatively low birthrates. But for countries with negative net migration, such as China, more people requires more babies.

“The good news is that the Chinese government is fully aware of the problem,” said Yong Cai, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who specializes in Chinese demographics. “The bad news is, empirically speaking, that there is very little they can do about it.”

That’s because the playbook for boosting national birthrates is a rather thin one. Most initiatives that encourage families to have more children are expensive, and the results are often limited. Options include cash incentives for having babies, generous parental leave policies and free or subsidized child care.

Two decades ago, Australia tried a “baby bonus” program that paid the equivalent of nearly 6,000 U.S. dollars a child at its peak. At the time the campaign started in 2004, the country’s fertility rate was around 1.8 children per woman. (For most developed nations, a fertility rate of 2.1 is the minimum needed for the population to remain steady without immigration.) By 2008, the rate had risen to a high of around 2, but by 2020, six years after the program had ended, it was at 1.6 — lower than when the cash payments were first introduced.

By one estimate, the initiative led to an additional 24,000 births.

Dr. Liz Allen, a demographer at the Australian National University, said that the program was largely ineffective and that publicly funded paternity leave and child care would have been a more effective use of taxpayer money. “Government intervention to increase fertility rates is best focused on addressing the issues that prevent people from having their desired family size,” she said.

Experts say the most effective initiatives address social welfare, employment policy and other underlying economic issues. France, Germany and Nordic countries like Sweden and Denmark have had notable success in arresting the decline in birthrates, often through government-funded child care or generous parental leave policies.

But even the success of those efforts has had limits, with no country able to reach a sustained return to the 2.1 replacement rate. (The U.S. rate fell below 2.1 in the 1970s, slowly rose back up to the replacement rate by 2007, then collapsed again after the Great Recession, to a current level just below 1.7.)

“You’re not going to reverse the trend, but if you throw in the kitchen sink and make childbearing more attractive,  you may be able to prevent the population from falling off a cliff,” said John Bongaarts, a demographer at the Population Council, a research institution in New York.

Sweden is often cited as a model for increasing fertility rates, thanks to a government-boosted jump in its birthrate. After introducing nine months of parental leave in the 1970s and implementing a “speed premium” in 1980 (which incentivized mothers to have multiple children within a set period), Sweden saw fertility rise from around 1.6 early in the decade to a peak just above the replacement rate by 1990. (The country has since increased its parental leave to 16 months, among the highest in the world.)

After that uptick, however, Sweden’s birthrate fell through the ’90s. Over the last 50 years, its fertility rate has fluctuated significantly, rising roughly in tandem with economic booms. And while the country still has one of the highest fertility rates among the most advanced economies, over the past decade it has followed a trajectory similar to that of most developed nations: down.

Recent research suggests a reason Sweden’s fertility spikes were only temporary: Families rushed to have children they were already planning to have. Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said financial incentives seldom increase the overall number of children born, but instead encourage families to take advantage of benefits that may not last. The spikes, he added, can have unforeseen consequences. “When you have 50,000 children born one year, 100,000 the next, and then 50,000 the year after that, it is really bad for planning and education,” he said.

Few countries have embraced pronatalist policies as vigorously as Hungary, whose right-wing populist leader, Viktor Orban, is dedicating 5 percent of the nation’s G.D.P. toward increasing birthrates. The government encourages procreation through generous loans that become gifts upon the birth of multiple children, tax forgiveness for mothers who have three children, and free fertility treatments.

Around the time these efforts began under Mr. Orban in 2010, Hungary’s fertility rate was just over 1.2, among the lowest in Europe. Over the 2010s, that rate climbed to around 1.6 — a modest improvement at a high cost.

It remains to be seen how far China will go to stem its decline in population, which was set in motion when the country’s fertility rate began to plummet decades ago. That drop began even before the country’s family planning policies limiting most families to a single child, introduced in 1979. Those who defied the rules were punished with fines and even forced abortions.

The official end of Beijing’s one-child policy in 2016, however, has not led to a rise in births, despite cash incentives and tax cuts for parents. The country’s fertility rate rose slightly around that time, but has fallen since, according to data from the United Nations: from around 1.7 children per woman, on par with Australia and Britain, to around 1.2, among the lowest in the world. That recent drop could be a result of unreliable data from China or a technical effect of delays in childbearing, but it likely also reflects a combination of various pressures that have mounted in the country over time.

Even though they are now allowed to, many young Chinese are not interested in having large families. Vastly more young Chinese people are enrolling in higher education, marrying later and having children later. Raised in single-child households, some have come to see small families as normal. But the bigger impediment to having a second or third child is financial, according to Lauren A. Johnston, an economist at the University of Sydney who studies Chinese demographics. She said many parents cite the high cost of housing and education as the main obstacle to having more children. “People can’t afford to buy space for themselves, let alone for two kids,” she said.

China’s government could ease the burden on young families through housing subsidies, extended parental leave and increased funding for education and pensions, experts say. Other policy changes, like reforming the country’s restrictive household registration system and raising the official retirement age — female blue-collar workers must retire at 50, for example — could boost the nation’s working-age population, alleviating some of the economic strain that comes with population decline.

Though the Chinese are unlikely to find more success than the Swedes in recovering a high fertility rate, “there is low-hanging fruit that can allow them to squeeze more productivity and higher labor force participation from the population,” said Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

All this points to a Chinese population, currently 1.4 billion, that is likely to continue shrinking. In contrast to economists who have cast China’s population decline as a grim sign for global growth, many demographers have been more sanguine, noting the benefits of a smaller population.

John Wilmoth, director of the Population Division at the United Nations, said that after decades of exponential growth in which the world’s population doubled to more than seven billion between 1970 to 2014, the doom-and-gloom assessments about declining fertility rates and depopulation tend to be overstated. Japan has been battling population decline since the 1970s, he noted, but it remains one of the world’s largest economies. “It has not been the disaster that people imagined,” Mr. Wilmoth said. “Japan is not in a death spiral.”

Worldwide, fertility remains above the replacement rate, which means that allowing more immigration will continue to be an option for many developed nations, even those that historically haven’t relied on it: Before the pandemic, net migration into Japan, while relatively low, had been increasing steadily.

Without immigration, pragmatic and noncoercive measures that encourage parents to have families while pursuing careers — as well as policies that allow people in their 60s and 70s to keep working — are the key to managing negative population growth, Mr. Wilmoth said. “Population stabilization is overall a good thing,” he said. “All societies need to adapt to having older populations. What really matters is the speed of change, and how fast we get from here to there.”

 

[GringoSalado 1651]

18 hours ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

I’ve thought about that 2.1 number lately.  It seems intuitive in that you need a male and a female and add in infant mortality.  But is it anything more than just that intuitive logic?  It seems like you could have replacement level a lot lower than that because 2.1 assumes a man is only getting one woman pregnant.  
 

One dude gets two ladies pregnant. They have three kids total to replace the three parents.  Add in a fractional share for infant mortality.  Replaced there at a 1.6 rate or something.  
 

Am I wrong? Is there some reason to believe 2.1 is the replacement level that I’m not thinking of?

I believe this scenario falls apart because the birth rate is 50/50 (49/51, whatever it takes) male/female so ea. generation 1/3 of the men are dropped.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

2 minutes ago, GringoSalado said:

I believe this scenario falls apart because the birth rate is 50/50 (49/51, whatever it takes) male/female so ea. generation 1/3 of the men are dropped.

Ah. That makes sense. 

[Schulz2.0 28950]

2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

The point that the world is virtually empty was so self evident to me that I didn’t fact check something I heard long ago. Sue me. 

[sidis 9821]

13 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

my rv is 12 feet tall.

that bridge underpass clearance is 11.5 feet tall.

mundane details matter.

 

2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

The point that the world is virtually empty was so self evident to me that I didn’t fact check something I heard long ago. Sue me. 

a lot of that empty world is not habitable and does not contain the resources necessary for long-term human prosperity.  it's not simply about "space."  in fact, more than half of the land area of earth is not suitable for long-term habitation (glaciers/barren/mountains/extreme desert).  you are also ignoring all the unpleasant and unintended consequences of what happens to that land (and the earth) when settlement and development occurs.

[YGIFS 19449]

3 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

If I said there was 5 golf balls in the astrodome and there were really 250 golf balls in the astrodome the astrodome would still be virtually empty of balls. 

Uhmmm, no. I can’t fathom anyone actually proposing that and there’s literally no way it would gain any tractions, so

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

I just remembered- it was like every family unit could have a 10,000 square foot lot. I translated that into an acre per person bc I heard it a long time ago and I’m an idiot Sandwhich.
Cue Gordon Ramsey Gif. 

Edited February 9, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[crash_davis 23094]

Got damned Gen Z male orcas! When will they every fucking leave the house?

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/1155460644/killer-whale-moms-are-still-supporting-their-adult-sons-and-its-costing-them?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

And here's the striking thing — since K35 was born two decades ago, his mom has never had another calf. Contrast that with other females in the population.

"Some whales started reproducing at the same age around the same time," says Weiss, "and they had daughters. And they've produced three or four offspring."

ANIMALS

Mysterious Type Of Killer Whale, Sought After For Years, Found In Southern Ocean

It's not just K16. In a paper out this week in the journal Current Biology, Weiss and his colleagues looked back across four decades of life history records of Southern Resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest. The trend was clear:

"Killer whale mothers pay a really huge cost to take care of their sons," says Weiss. That cost is that they have fewer offspring. "And they do this throughout their son's life and never really stop paying that cost to keep their sons alive."

In fact, when a mom dies, her son usually perishes within a year or two. "We think that is largely because they're seeing a huge reduction in the amount of food they get," explains Weiss.

Weiss can't think of another animal that makes this never-ending investment when it has the option of reproducing multiple times. So why would these orca moms sacrifice so much for their sons? Weiss argues the potential payoff is huge.

"K35 is now one of our biggest males in the population," says Weiss. "He's grown big and healthy and looks good."

That means he's ready to become a father.

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the next few calves that get popped out in the population are his," says Weiss.

The result is that his mom would become a grandmother multiple times over. Her genes would end up in a bunch of calves. And because they'll be born into other pods, she wouldn't have to spend any effort raising them.

"It's an amazing piece of work," says Eve Jourdain, the director of the Norwegian Orca Survey. Jourdain, who wasn't involved in the study, is hoping to conduct a similar research project in Norway.

"There could be direct comparisons possible across populations," says Jourdain. "And only then can we start getting a better understanding of how important it is for the conservation of those different populations."

It's worth mentioning that this strategy of moms investing so much in their sons has a dark side. Southern Resident killer whales like K16 and K35 are in trouble. In recent years, the population has cratered to just 73 animals. And what these orcas really need right now is more reproductive females.

"That's how you keep a population of slow-breeding animals going," says Weiss. "So investing in sons for a population like ours that is so stressed is really not ideal."

Weiss worries that this maternal strategy, which served this population so well in the past, could raise their risk of extinction — that the kind of lifelong bonds he's seen between K16 and her son may tether these creatures to an uncertain fate.

[KYHorn 17001]

 

21 hours ago, bolverk said:

Not sure the northern hemisphere will be able to rely on anyone but sub-Saharan Africa for loads of new immigrants unless those other countries start losing population themselves. One thing the map doesn't capture though is infant mortality rates, which may raise the bar on replacement levels much higher than 2.1 births per woman.

Everywhere in dark blue is below replacement level.

Taken from r/MapPorn:

Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/

 

20 hours ago, bolverk said:

The literature I've read in the past is that there's a very strong correlation between women's educational attainment levels in a country and its birth rates. @Wulaw Horn's citation of data regarding religiosity is a new wrinkle and is perhaps unsurprising, given that higher educated people have a tendency to be less religious.

To your point, higher educated societies also have stronger representation of women in positions of power, so it'd be much more difficult to force them to get off birth control in those countries. Any further commentary by me on that topic would breach the CR barrier.

 

20 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Yeah but the religiosity in places it’s studied in depth (like the Swiss) matters more then any of the other controls. They are isolating it to that one variable and that’s the one that correlates. 

 

20 hours ago, YGIFS said:

Once again, I get it.  But as women become more educated...it's a sign that their society is progressing beyond farming/machinist/housewife paradigms, no?  With that education and embrace of freedom, as a corollary, comes a desire---obviously hellbent and twisted---to have some domain over their birthing rights.  Western and Asian men are also wanting fewer children, but let's not pretend---women who are operating under "muh freedomz" with a diploma in hand, don't want to be baby factories.  What's more, society at large knows they don't need to be.  The rest of this shit is just spinning data as an excuse to google "South Korean creampie" videos.  Or so Brisket said.

 

19 hours ago, bolverk said:

Not necessarily. Educational standards, political institutions, and cultural expectations do not disappear overnight. Those will linger long enough that new populations will largely adopt them. I'm not saying they won't be influenced by new entrants into modern society, but I've seen first hand both in the US and Europe how immigrant populations, including Muslims, can quickly adopt all of those.

Besides, Western culture (beyond religion) is the dominant global culture, and young people by and large appreciate those freedoms immensely. Of course, there all always outliers and some countries do a much better job than others in including them into the fold, but I'm fairly optimistic from my western white male chauvinist perspective that we, as a species, will eventually settle into a more stable pattern if we don't blow ourselves up or destroy a habitable climate in the meantime. For me, those are much higher on my list of concerns than a loss in global population.

But let's go back to maps with more recent data on religiosity and consider a couple highly religious countries and compare them to the birth rates map above. Focus on Iran and India below and then glance back up to recent birth rates. What do you see?

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment-varies-by-country-among-people-of-all-ages/

I think there's more to it than just religion alone. Yes, there's a strong correlation, but I'm not sure it's the only causation.

 

EDIT: I'm sincerely not trying to CR the topic, but why don't we try to integrate new populations better to counteract their "tendency to live in their own areas" so as to ensure they quickly adopt Western values as possible?

Interesting discussion going on here. 

I think it's leading to the conclusion that fertility is certainly multifactorial and the strength of one factor is likely variable depending on the culture. It's even more complicated though because education, income, religiosity, etc are all strongly intercorrelated. So, while one factor may be the best predictor in any given study, the others are undoubtedly highly influential. 

Something that may help bring these factors together is individualism. 

In these types of conversations, people often blame the expense and challenges of raising children, but children didn't suddenly become more difficult or expensive to raise. We're essentially richer than we have ever been in America, and certainly better off than when our fertility rates were MUCH higher. The difference is our expectations and larger approach to life. We want to provide our children with unique and meaningful experiences and opportunities. We want them to have an adolescence and emerging adulthood that is rewarding and provides them with the space to pursue hobbies, develop skills, and interests, and explore the world and themselves. This is a relatively new approach and is possible only through economic prosperity. Emerging adulthood, and even adolescence before that, were not stages of life in earlier decades and centuries, respectively.

We also, perhaps because we were raised under some degree of this individualistic approach as well, want to have space to do what makes us happy as adults. This requires greater family income (note relationship with increase in women's education and entering the workforce), and once we experience the freedom that comes with greater economic prosperity and individualism, we don't want to give that up and we want to provide it to our children in equal or greater measure than we received. 

[Deej 76750]

The solution to population decline in the US is to expand the NBA by a few hundred teams.

 

[TKthunder2 4985]

5 hours ago, KYHorn said:

In these types of conversations, people often blame the expense and challenges of raising children, but children didn't suddenly become more difficult or expensive to raise. We're essentially richer than we have ever been in America, and certainly better off than when our fertility rates were MUCH higher.

We got richer because many families now have 2 incomes. As a result of working moms daycare is more in demand than ever. Higher demand for daycare and low supply has significantly increased the cost of raising a child in their early years. Obviously this is a complex issue but the higher cost is a true metric for many.

https://fortune.com/2023/02/09/how-much-would-you-pay-for-childcare-for-your-career/?itm_source=parsely-api

Edited February 10, 2023 by TKthunder2

[KYHorn 17001]

8 hours ago, TKthunder2 said:

We got richer because many families now have 2 incomes. As a result of working moms daycare is more in demand than ever. Higher demand for daycare and low supply has significantly increased the cost of raising a child in their early years. Obviously this is a complex issue but the higher cost is a true metric for many.

It's absolutely expensive. I have 3 under 5yo. I'm not familiar with the literature on this topic though. I'd be interested to see studies on the cost of childcare over time in real dollars, but you can't get much lower in pay for childcare workers than it is now. And if it is significantly more expensive, I think that only speaks to the higher quality care and lower student:teacher ratios that parents are demanding in ways they didn't before. In other words, I'll have fewer children, work instead of staying home, and with this additional income spread across fewer children, I'll expect higher quality for each kid. Then, in addition to the other heightened expectations I have for travel, larger homes, sports, camps, etc, this second income all of a sudden feels stretched and not sufficient to meet the needs for the few children I have. As just one example, homes are significantly larger than even a few decades ago. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by KYHorn

[Celery Man 20929]

Abandoning liberty to ensure the supply of white babies is committing cultural suicide.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

47 minutes ago, KYHorn said:

It's absolutely expensive. I have 3 under 5yo. I'm not familiar with the literature in this topic though. I'd be interested to see studies on the cost of childcare over time in real dollars, but you can't get much lower in pay for childcare workers than it is now. And if it is significantly more expensive, I think that only speaks to the higher quality care and lower student:teacher ratios that parents are demanding in ways they didn't before. In other words, I'll have fewer children, work instead of staying home, and with this additional income spread across fewer children, I'll expect higher quality for each kid. Then, in addition to the other heightened expectations I have for travel, larger homes, sports, camps, etc, this second income all of a sudden feels stretched and not sufficient to meet the needs for the few children I have. As just one example, homes are significantly larger than even a few decades ago. 

I don't have any sources to pull out of my hat, but before the ACA a lot of churches provided childcare. After the ACA a whole bunch of them shut down their childcare businesses. I asked about it at the time and was told that there were new requirements which made it impossible for them to run a non-profit childcare business. So we lost a bunch of those, and of course supply and demand reared it's ugly hand and now childcare costs so much that it really doesn't make sense for a mother of two or three or more kids to work just to cover child care costs. Now, I could be wrong on the causes and the ACA and all that, as that all happened before I had kids, but the fact still stands that the cost of child care is so high that it discourages families from having two working parents.

 

[Don Johnson 4752]

On 2/8/2023 at 8:08 PM, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

I’ve thought about that 2.1 number lately.  It seems intuitive in that you need a male and a female and add in infant mortality.  But is it anything more than just that intuitive logic?  It seems like you could have replacement level a lot lower than that because 2.1 assumes a man is only getting one woman pregnant.  
 

One dude gets two ladies pregnant. They have three kids total to replace the three parents.  Add in a fractional share for infant mortality.  Replaced there at a 1.6 rate or something.  
 

Am I wrong? Is there some reason to believe 2.1 is the replacement level that I’m not thinking of?

Age of having kids also plays into it.  There's a difference in population when a family is producing a new generation every 20 years as opposed to every 30 years.

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

16 minutes ago, Don Johnson said:

Age of having kids also plays into it.  There's a difference in population when a family is producing a new generation every 20 years as opposed to every 30 years.

@GringoSalado explanation I liked.  Basically, every mother has to produce a future mother. As a practical matter that means two kids.  

[Don Johnson 4752]

6 minutes ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

@GringoSalado explanation I liked.  Basically, every mother has to produce a future mother. As a practical matter that means two kids.  

Using that number, having kids at everage age 20:

After 80 years:  1 - 80 year old, 2 60 year olds, 4 40 year olds, 8 20 year olds, 16 newborns = 31 people added every 80 years

Having kids at average age 30:

After 90 years: 1 - 90 year old, 2 60 year olds, 4 30 year olds, 8 new borns = 15 people added every 90 years

 

Big difference even though both families are having the same amount of children per mother.

Edited February 10, 2023 by Don Johnson

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

1 minute ago, Don Johnson said:

Using that number, having kids at everage age 20:

After 80 years:  1 - 80 year old, 2 60 year olds, 4 40 year olds, 8 20 year olds, 16 newborns = 31 people added every 80 years

Having kids at average age 30:

After 90 years: 1 - 90 year old, 2 60 year olds, 4 30 year olds, 8 new borns = 15 people added every 90 years

Ah.  My question was about replacement of population.  Why is 2.1 the number.  Answer: because gen 2 will be smaller than gen 1 if gen 1 produces less than one mother per mother (statistically, two kids per mom).

 

i think you're confusing things.  2.1 is the number to have zero growth.  You show it in your example to result in exponential growth.  The difference is because only half of those people listed above will birth a child, because only half of them are women.

You should show: 1 - 80 year old, 2 60 year olds, 2 40 year olds (because only one of those 60 year olds birthed two babies), 2 40 year olds (etc.).   Over time, an infinite chain of generations would produce no net gain at 2.1 births per woman regardless of whether they give birth at 20 years old or at 30 years old or the second before they die. 

[Snake Diggity 4619]

A lot of great discussion in this thread in the last few pages.

I think a big part of birth rate decline is that raising children relative to expectations has become exponentially more expensive/difficult than in the past.  It may not actually be more of a sacrifice to raise kids in the world today than in the 70s, but I think people certainly feel like it is.  Anecdotally, my experience as a parent thus far (currently have a 7 yo and 4 yo) has been that the sacrifice in freedom and the intensity of pressure to be a good parent has been a lot worse than expected; I am relatively well-off, so the financial burden hasn't stung much, although shelling out $3000/mo for daycare didn't feel good.  Anyway, I don't think I'm actually having a harder time raising my kids than my parents did, but it certainly feels like I am; that influenced our decision to stop at 2, and it certainly influences how I talk about the experience of having children to people who have not yet had children.  I think that summarizes the cause of the drop in birth rate in the 1st world over the last 30 years.  To change that, you have to change the perception of the experience of having children. 

My solution to address that would be similar to ideas that have been cited many times in this thread: paid parental leave (2 years per guardian per kid), free daycare (free starting at age 2), universal Pre-k, universal healthcare, and significant tax incentives for people having 3+ kids.  I don't think that alone would get 1st world birth rates above 2.1, but it would make a difference.

Many first world countries (primarily the US, Canada, western Europe, and Australia) can likely bridge the gap in the short term with immigration and by extending the working age.  Longer term, increases in worker productivity is the answer.  If robotics and software can make a 2040 worker as productive as 3 2020 workers, then the economy and standard of living will be better off.  But obviously if there is a net decline in population, eventually the economy and standard of living won't matter (unless we cure aging/death).

I personally am very optimistic on this issue.  I think things will be done to address the problem.  I do think Russia and China are proper fucked and that is risky for the world, but I think that risk will have either turned into reality or been mitigated within the next 10 years.  For now I would predict the best years for humanity lie ahead and would guess world population stabilizes around 12 billion, accompanied by massive increases in standards of living worldwide.  I for one really like the idea that we might finally be forced to treat every young person as the tremendously precious resource they are.

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Snake Diggity

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

10 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I don't have any sources to pull out of my hat, but before the ACA a lot of churches provided childcare. After the ACA a whole bunch of them shut down their childcare businesses. I asked about it at the time and was told that there were new requirements which made it impossible for them to run a non-profit childcare business. So we lost a bunch of those, and of course supply and demand reared it's ugly hand and now childcare costs so much that it really doesn't make sense for a mother of two or three or more kids to work just to cover child care costs. Now, I could be wrong on the causes and the ACA and all that, as that all happened before I had kids, but the fact still stands that the cost of child care is so high that it discourages families from having two working parents.

 

My buddy and I each have 3. He calculated he would want his wife to make at least 100k to go back to work full time with taxes, childcare, maid service, dry cleaning- extra eating out and stress on wife. 
my calculation was 65 or 70k. My wife will only ever work if she wants to work, while our kids are under our roof, not because it makes any economic sense. She doesn’t have a 6 figure skill in the marketplace. Teaching is always ok bc you are off whenever the kids are off. 

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

19 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

A lot of great discussion in this thread in the last few pages.

I think a big part of birth rate decline is that raising children relative to expectations has become exponentially more expensive/difficult than in the past.  It may not actually be more of a sacrifice to raise kids in the world today than in the 70s, but I think people certainly feel like it is.  Anecdotally, my experience as a parent thus far (currently have a 7 yo and 4 yo) has been that the sacrifice in freedom and the intensity of pressure to be a good parent has been a lot worse than expected; I am relatively well-off, so the financial burden hasn't stung much, although shelling out $3000/mo for daycare didn't feel good.  Anyway, I don't think I'm actually having a harder time raising my kids than my parents did, but it certainly feels like I am; that influenced our decision to stop at 2, and it certainly influences how I talk about the experience of having children to people who have not yet had children.  I think that summarizes the cause of the drop in birth rate in the 1st world over the last 30 years.  To change that, you have to change the perception of the experience of having children. 

My solution to address that would be similar to ideas that have been cited many times in this thread: paid parental leave (2 years per guardian per kid), free daycare (free starting at age 2), universal Pre-k, universal healthcare, and significant tax incentives for people having 3+ kids.  I don't think that alone would get 1st world birth rates above 2.1, but it would make a difference.

Many first world countries (primarily the US, Canada, western Europe, and Australia) can likely bridge the gap in the short term with immigration and by extending the working age.  Longer term, increases in worker productivity is the answer.  If robotics and software can make a 2040 worker as productive as 3 2020 workers, then the economy and standard of living will be better off.  But obviously if there is a net decline in population, eventually the economy and standard of living won't matter (unless we cure aging/death).

I personally am very optimistic on this issue.  I think things will be done to address the problem.  I do think Russia and China are proper fucked and that is risky for the world, but I think that risk will have either turned into reality or been mitigated within the next 10 years.  For now I would predict the best years for humanity lie ahead and would guess world population stabilizes around 12 billion, accompanied by massive increases in standards of living worldwide.  I for one really like the idea that we might finally be forced to treat every young person as the tremendously precious resource they are.

 

So a lot good in this post- a lot I think you are overly optimistic on but that’s like you and I disagreeing on the value of Hunter Brown- we each have our opinion of it and only time will tell the tale. 
What I did want to respond to was  what you said in your first paragraph which I think is a really smart point and under discussed in modern life. We have turned new parents into neurotics through society and we laugh about it and think it’s funny. It’s NOT. It’s mental cost to the parent and I think it sets the expectations of their behavior such that it turns the kids neurotic too. There’s a real cost to it. And declining population I think might be part of it even if it’s never talked about that way. 
my friend (a woman) had friends and she quit her job as an attorney making 200k (cool- whatever/ I love that choice if you want to be a stay at home mom) and she immediately set out to be super Tiger mom. She worries about whether or not her kids (at 4) should learn mandarin or French. They go to 35k a year private elementary schools. They are in 3 activities after school every week. Playing

piano. Gymnastics. More language lessons. And still, she worries that she isn’t giving them the best platform to succeed. It’s lunacy and it didn’t happen 30 years ago like that to that to your point. The difference between you being in the top .01% of parents vs the top 1% vs top 5% just isn’t a big deal to the kid. Cut yourself a break. Don’t treat it like the most demanding job in the world. Have fun with it. Go on a 6 month RV trip where you go hiking and tubing and visit mine shafts and colonial places and beaches and oceans and redwood trees. That was awesome. And it was fun. And there was no stress to it. And the kids actually learned important life skills. Much easier than fence/swim/Girl Scouts and flute lessons (all for the same 7 year old!). 
we expect to much of parents and it’s a bummer. 
End of the day it boils down to this- if you have a kid in wedlock and don’t divorce his mom so he always has two parents there, don’t diddle your kid, don’t beat him, send him to school every day and he never goes to bed hungry you are literally ahead of 80% of the parenting population and you’ve probably done enough for your kid to turn out AOK sit out making it the most thankless job in the world. 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Wulaw Horn

[Samson's Wig 3189]

I'm all for paid maternal and paternal leave, free daycare, etc. etc., but these won't solve the birth rate issue.    Such measures have been in place in countries such as Canada and most of Western Europe for a long time and they are even more reliant on immigration for population growth than the U.S., aren't they? 

Add in the fact that the American economy relies heavily on small businesses, much moreso than Western Europe, Canada, etc. and you're talking about policies that the majority of American employers would be exempt from - thereby having even less impact.  Unless we're also adding destroying small businesses into the equation here (which seems to be the unintended consequence of most well-intended legislation). This would be akin to pouring gasoline on our economy and lighting a match.  That's going to have a significant impact on birth rates as well, but not for the better. 

Educated people, on the whole, don't want more kids, and it's not significantly about finances.  It's about lifestyle for the parents and the kids they do have.  Religious people, generally speaking, are less educated than secular people.  Many major religions actively push procreation as part of their message, for obvious reasons.  The only thing that will spike a birth rate would be for a major religion to truly seize control, kill off the educated populace, and enforce their nonsense from the top down - almost the inverse of Mao's moves.  Sign me up!

Here's a solution of the top of my head.  Start paying educated couples for their embryos.  Put otherwise healthy folks through IVF and have them squirt out 7-10 embryos a pop.  Store the embryos and offer free immigration, or a pile of money, whatever, to anyone who will carry 2-3 to term.  Maybe start a civil service program where girls get their college paid for if they go through a couple of pregnancies for the team.   Blamo!  Population growth guaranteed.  Now the educated class is doing their part to add numbers without having to raise them.  All we have to do now is figure out how to pay to raise all the new babies in a healthy manner that makes them contributing members to society.  What could go wrong‽‽‽?‽‽‽

Or maybe, just maybe, our economy will adjust as populations decline, and while there will be bumps in the road (which will happen no matter what anyway) we resourceful humans will find a way to make it all work out just fine.

 

 

 

[YGIFS 19449]

Y'all really got me thinking.  What if offering pragmatic and cost-effective services to new parents on 2-3 kids that could help ease the burden of child-rearing was a viable solution?  Wouldn't solve the whole thing, but it would help plus it's the right thing to do with a country of the means like us.  

But nope, let's instead issue bounties.  

[GringoSalado 1651]

Been hearing an ad for surrogate mothers in the regular radio rotation (which seems to be about 85% federally-funded PSAs), as I recall the offer was $50k.

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

Y'all really got me thinking.  What if offering pragmatic and cost-effective services to new parents on 2-3 kids that could help ease the burden of child-rearing was a viable solution?  Wouldn't solve the whole thing, but it would help plus it's the right thing to do with a country of the means like us.  

But nope, let's instead issue bounties.  

Keep up. The places that do that already have lower birth rates than we do. That’s not “solving the problem” if you happen to believe it is a problem. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

6 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

So a lot good in this post- a lot I think you are overly optimistic on but that’s like you and I disagreeing on the value of Hunter Brown- we each have our opinion of it and only time will tell the tale. 
What I did want to respond to was  what you said in your first paragraph which I think is a really smart point and under discussed in modern life. We have turned new parents into neurotics through society and we laugh about it and think it’s funny. It’s NOT. It’s mental cost to the parent and I think it sets the expectations of their behavior such that it turns the kids neurotic too. There’s a real cost to it. And declining population I think might be part of it even if it’s never talked about that way. 
my friend (a woman) had friends and she quit her job as an attorney making 200k (cool- whatever/ I love that choice if you want to be a stay at home mom) and she immediately set out to be super Tiger mom. She worries about whether or not her kids (at 4) should learn mandarin or French. They go to 35k a year private elementary schools. They are in 3 activities after school every week. Playing

piano. Gymnastics. More language lessons. And still, she worries that she isn’t giving them the best platform to succeed. It’s lunacy and it didn’t happen 30 years ago like that to that to your point. The difference between you being in the top .01% of parents vs the top 1% vs top 5% just isn’t a big deal to the kid. Cut yourself a break. Don’t treat it like the most demanding job in the world. Have fun with it. Go on a 6 month RV trip where you go hiking and tubing and visit mine shafts and colonial places and beaches and oceans and redwood trees. That was awesome. And it was fun. And there was no stress to it. And the kids actually learned important life skills. Much easier than fence/swim/Girl Scouts and flute lessons (all for the same 7 year old!). 
we expect to much of parents and it’s a bummer. 
End of the day it boils down to this- if you have a kid in wedlock and don’t divorce his mom so he always has two parents there, don’t diddle your kid, don’t beat him, send him to school every day and he never goes to bed hungry you are literally ahead of 80% of the parenting population and you’ve probably done enough for your kid to turn out AOK sit out making it the most thankless job in the world. 

I blame Bluey. E'rbody wants to be like Bandit and Chilli.

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

7 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Fair point.  To be clear---I don't think declining birth rates are a problem for the West.  Organized religion and White Pride are fucking crimes against humanity.  Sadly, those people are doing everything they can to proliferate their species from mandating births to having 5 kids apiece themselves on the government's dime.  Good news is they are eating/drinking/shooting themselves into oblivion and I just might die of laughter.  It's a race to the bottom and brown agnostic scientists gonna win.  And rightfully so.  Fuck preserving White Culture.  Locke and Hobbs are dead.  I'm fucking stuck with Dan Patrick and the Kardashians.

Brown agnostic scientist doesn’t win any kind of evolutionary race (either to the top or bottom) if he doesn’t procreate. 

[KYHorn 17001]

2 hours ago, YGIFS said:

Y'all really got me thinking.  What if offering pragmatic and cost-effective services to new parents on 2-3 kids that could help ease the burden of child-rearing was a viable solution?  Wouldn't solve the whole thing, but it would help plus it's the right thing to do with a country of the means like us.  

But nope, let's instead issue bounties.  

 

1 hour ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Keep up. The places that do that already have lower birth rates than we do. That’s not “solving the problem” if you happen to believe it is a problem. 

I think the best policies overall are just straight cash incentives. Use it as you see fit to raise your children. Want to stay home and use it to ease that burden in some way? Go for it. Want to use it to help offset childcare costs so you can go to work, or food or sports? Nice.

However, going back to my point about individualism, here's a recent study of Canadian women WHO WANT TO HAVE CHILDREN/MORE CHILDREN:

So, the concerns that make it most likely for them to say "despite wanting more kids, I don't expect to have more" are due to diverse reasons, but not as centered on finances as we might expect. It's more related to personal concerns about freedom, time, career goals, and the perceived intensity that parenting requires.

As a side note, and somewhat contradicting the above point (but not entirely!), this recent study makes an interesting argument: as income inequality increases, fertility decreases because it increases the social norms related to parental support for at both ends: more money transfers to children (in some form) at the upper end, and greater need for co-residence with parents and children at the lower end. 

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/g8yv2/ 

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

On 2/8/2023 at 9:32 PM, Neonmoon said:

Interesting, so why are the super religious Iranians and Indians showing low birth rates? Same with Indonesia. I would posit India’s emerging economy and large increase in literacy over the past 50 years. Iran, no idea. 

I wonder how “super religious” Iranians are. If you are convinced to go to church at the barrel of a gun that doesn’t make you bought in. The idea of them being super religious is quite possibly a giant façade- or maybe not- but I don’t know how you could tell in an authoritarian regime. 

[CooterBrown 18001]

From that chart it looks like improving workplace benefits (maternity/paternity leave, Flex Time, additional sick time for parents, etc), removing the $5K limit on pretax childcare, providing childcare & after school financial assistance could help.

[KYHorn 17001]

9 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

From that chart it looks like improving workplace benefits (maternity/paternity leave, Flex Time, additional sick time for parents, etc), removing the $5K limit on pretax childcare, providing childcare & after school financial assistance could help.

You'd be selecting the lower priority reasons and the same ones that have been tried in other countries and found to do little. 

We can offer all the paid leave, flex time, and sick time we want for parents, but if they'd rather be advancing their career, pursuing their own hobbies and interests, and enjoying freedom to do as they please day to day, those policies aren't going to move the needle much. 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

Offering incentives for folks to have more kids is just kicking the can down the road. Same with immigration, and I'm all for immigration. The reality is that a certain generation has structured our economy in such a way that there is no other option but pain. They would rather the younger generations feel the pain, so that is what is going to happen. So thanks, I guess.

[Horn Dogg 3868]

On 10/1/2021 at 7:34 AM, 52-80 said:

Women have a stronger imperative to reproduce.  Women have their choice of partner with whom to reproduce.  Men get the short end of the stick.  These 3 things are a steady constant through time and I dont think the relative education or earning power of men will change that dynamics much. 

What will change the overall repro rate then I think is more cultural in terms of women/society consciously prioritizing their careers; maybe having children too late; choosing smaller families; eschewing children altogether; etc.

I gamed this while banging a prostitute at a Holiday Inn Express last night

They gonna control all the money and all the pussy!

[Wulaw Horn 19063]

What amazing to me about that chart is in dead lonely last at less than 1% of women giving it any attention is “partner doesn’t want kids”. 
she’s like- who gives a shit. That ain’t affecting me. Ha. 

[Snake Diggity 4619]

Figuring out which societal changes to make to entice 1st world women to want to have more children is very very difficult.  The bottom line is that children require a massive investment of time, energy, and money.  Society can probably address the money part, but there’s really nothing that I can think of to address the time/energy part.  Taking away the requirement for parents to actually spend time and energy on their kids kind of defeats the purpose of having them at all.  And I cannot envision any scenario where the population depends on some kind of state-run foster-care-for-all system.

I wonder how a significant reduction in working hours for ALL people would impact the birth rate.  Would shifting to a standard 1500 hour work year, combined with financial assistance for parents (free childcare and healthcare and addl tax breaks) do it?  If women (and men) had more “free time” would they be inclined to have more kids?

Edited February 11, 2023 by Snake Diggity